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On August 31, 2017, ELC submitted comments in response to the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s request for input to its proposed Consolidated State Plan (“State Plan” or “Plan”) pursuant to Every Student Succeeds Act (“ESSA”), the nation’s major education law. Highlighting Pennsylvania’s historic opportunity to create a new path to advance educational equity and close the achievement gap for at-risk students, ELC’s comments underscore the need for rigorous, uniform goals and standards applicable to all students, the development of more detailed measures and strategies to determine when and how to intervene to support low-performing schools, the need to address school climate issues and further refine chronic absenteeism as a metric, the need for greater state oversight to implement specific provisions of ESSA, and advance the progress of educationally at-risk students, particularly students in foster care, those experiencing homelessness, students with disabilities, English Learners (“ELs”), and youth in and exiting the juvenile justice system.

On July 6, 2017, ELC Staff Attorney Maura McInerney provided testimony to the Philadelphia School Reform Commission opposing a proposed special education plan that would have substantially increased the provision of special education services in segregated settings. After substantial opposition from advocates for students with disabilities, the Commission adopted a scaled-down version of its plan.

ELC co-signed this letter to Pennsylvania Secretary of Education Pedro Rivera in response to the denial of students’ right to a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) in the School District of Philadelphia in June, 2017.

This letter, which was sent to the Philadelphia School Reform Commission on June 13, was written on behalf of the Philadelphia Coalition for Special Education Advocates and other organizations to oppose “Resolution IU7: Alternative Special Education Program for students with disabilities in grades K through 12” in the Philadelphia School District.

ELC wrote this letter to the Philadelphia School Reform Commission in reference to SRC Resolution B-4 on alternative education programs in April 2017, urging the Commission to postpone consideration of the Camelot contract to allow additional time for review and discussion and to raise significant concerns about the multi-year charter school renewals scheduled for a vote.

A responsible charter school law must empower local governing bodies to strategically control charter growth as a tool to increase quality options and improve our system of public education for all communities. The charter school law should not force blind expansion on already burdened systems and compel the loss of neighborhood schools options. The Education Law Center wrote this letter to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in April 2017 urging them to oppose HB 97, the purported charter reform legislation.

The Pennsylvania Constitution guarantees that children across the state have access to a “thorough and efficient” system of public education, one that enables them to meet comprehensive state academic standards and graduation requirements. Despite this constitutional mandate, hundreds of thousands of children—particularly children of color and children in poorer communities—are denied the school resources they need to be successful in school and beyond. This Education Law Center report details the race and class inequities in Pennsylvania’s school funding system, building on ELC’s 2013 report “Funding, Formulas, and Fairness.”

Education Law Center Staff Attorney Kristina Moon presented testimony on March 16, 2017 to the Philadelphia School Reform Commission on how the city’s schools can better meet the needs of students learning English, parents with limited English proficiency, and immigrant families.

This testimony was presented in January, 2017 at a town hall meeting hosted by Philadelphia City Councilmember Helen Gym and the School District of Philadelphia. It raises a number of issues related to the educational needs of immigrant students, students learning English, and their families.

Published in February 2017, this analysis explains how Pennsylvania’s charter schools serve disproportionately fewer of the state’s vulnerable students than traditional public schools, too often segregating students by type of disability. Federal and state laws are clear that charter schools must provide quality public options for all pupils. With respect to students eligible for special education under Pennsylvania law and the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the data demonstrates that, even where charter schools are serving proportionate numbers of students with disabilities in line with their share of the overall student population, the charter sector by and large does not educate students with disabilities who require higher cost aids and services—e.g. students with intellectual disabilities, serious emotional disturbance, and multiple disabilities. Instead, the charter sector serves students with disabilities who require lower cost aids and services, such as speech and language impairment and specific learning disabilities.

ELC submitted these comments to the U.S. Department of Education in response to the notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) published in the Federal Register on May 31, 2016 regarding the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Through these comments, we highlight the critical need for greater accountability of schools serving educationally at risk students, especially students experiencing homelessness, students in foster care, and youth involved in and reentering from the juvenile justice system.

In May 2016, ELC Staff Attorney Cheryl Kleiman testified at a Pittsburgh Public School Board hearing about the need to co-construct policies and practices with students and parents that decrease the use of exclusionary discipline and increase educational outcomes and opportunities for all students. ELC also urged the board to adopt a proposed Nondiscrimination Policy for Transgender Students and elevate the Program for Students with Exceptionalities to a cabinet level position to reflect the District’s commitment to inclusion for students with disabilities.

Stoneleigh Foundation Emerging Leader Fellow Ashley Sawyer was invited to speak to the Philadelphia City Council’s newly formed Special Committee on Criminal Justice Reform on May 23, 2016. The committee is collaborating in part to meet the goals of a new $3.5 million grant from the MacArthur Foundation to address the city’s high jail population and the racial bias in the city’s justice system. Ashley presented testimony on the need to address the School to Prison Pipeline and the poor educational opportunities available to incarcerated youth.

The lead poisoning crisis in Flint, Michigan has shined a light on a persistent, yet often invisible, problem in Pennsylvania. While many think of lead as an issue of the past, it is not. For many of Pennsylvania’s children, lead exposure continues to be a silent epidemic that plagues their communities and undermines their ability to learn. This brief, “Lead and Its Impact on Learning: What Schools, Parents & Policymakers Need to Know and Do,” written by Maura McInerney, Esq. and Alissa S. Werzen, M.D., was published February 11, 2016.

In January 2016, ELC submitted comments in response to the U.S. Department of Education’s request for recommendations prior to publishing proposed regulations to implement programs under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, as amended by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).

December 11, 2015: Pennsylvania’s public school funding crisis cannot be resolved by legislating new costs that will eventually exceed new revenues. Unfortunately, the School Code bill recently passed by the Pennsylvania Senate and under consideration in the House of Representatives would do just that. Revenues provided under a bipartisan budget deal would be swallowed up by the new costs associated with rapid charter school expansion. Statewide, charter schools would be permitted to open new buildings, add new grades, and expand their enrollment with almost no limitations. In Philadelphia, where the district is already under state control and over a third of students already attend charter schools, the legislation would place numerous schools under a different state operator, this time the Pennsylvania Department of Education, and convert many of them into charter schools – all still without ensuring those schools have adequate funding.

ELC’s comments, available below, were informed by our expertise advocating for the rights of the most vulnerable children birth through age twenty one and our extensive experience listening to the hundreds of children and families we have served each year for the past four decades. These public comments are part of ELC’s larger body of work focused on reducing exclusionary discipline that is disproportionately used on vulnerable populations and dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline that pushes at-risk youth into the juvenile and criminal justice systems.

In Unlocking the Door to Learning: Trauma-Informed Classrooms & TransformationalSchools,ELC Senior Staff Attorney Maura McInerney, Esq. and Amy McKlindon, M.S.W. discuss the impact of trauma on learning and what schools and educators can do to create a trauma-informed learning environment.

ELC Staff Attorney David Lapp’s recommendations on charter school legislation being considered by Pennsylvania State Legislature in June, 2015. Discussion includes a comparison of HB 530, PN 569 and SB 856, PN 968.